MacGyver Never Used Pantyliners (Probably)

Disclosure: this post may contain affiliate links, which means I may make a commission if you decide to make a purchase through one of my links, at no cost to you.

If you’ve been paying attention to my whining Facebook rants, you’ll know that I’m in the thick of grad school midterms right now. It’s really getting to me this semester, and I can’t wait for a nice, long, winter break.

But in between, if I can help it, I’m staying on top of things for the house – provided that it doesn’t once again sprout a personality and turn against me. Last week, water issues came a-calling – this time, it was during a rain storm, and my sliding glass door to the patio decided to spontaneously spring a leak. Panic set in and I freaked out Charlie, who didn’t know what to do with herself:  the sliding door is her entrance to the back yard, and for some reason, I was yelling at her to move out of the way. She was oblivious to the water pouring in through the top of the door. Poor thing.

The sliding glass door, when it’s not doing an impersonation of Niagra Falls.

I grabbed a large mixing bowl to collect the water as it poured in, and toweled everything up, but then realized that because I hadn’t yet put transition pieces on the new floor, water would soon be soaked up into the underlayment of the floor. See that strip of white shoe molding around the wall? It stops at the door until I figured out whether I wanted to replace the sliding door or not (I guess the house may be deciding that for me). And a water leak plus underlayment equals warping… and weeping (my tears, not the floor’s).

So, I got creative. After soaking up all of the water that I could, I tackled the culprit: a leaky screw (luckily I had a tube of 1-hour silicone shower caulk on hand, so when the rain let up a little, I could plug the leaky spot for a temporary hold until morning). Then, I did a little brainstorming about what might fill in the gap between flooring and door.

Hmm… let’s see… a gap of about 1/16th of an inch needs something super absorbent. You see where this is going, right? Yup. I totally used pantyliners to tackle a moisture issue with a leaky door. And no, there are no pictures of this. I was in full panic over my potentially damaged floor and would have been really embarrassed to find that not only did I do something as completely nuts as using feminine products in my DIY misadventures, but then I would have photographic evidence of my descent into madness. I did text Ann Marie (White House Black Shutters) and Kit (DIYdiva.net) about it, though. Hilarity ensues.

Crazy thing? The pantyliners totally worked. Dry floor.